The Weight of Sand
by CaraoftheSahara
Summary: Brenda was never given a choice nor a chance after the death of her family and her subsequent abduction. Now, on the worst of days, all she can do is put one foot in front of the other, pregnant and bearing the weight of sand. Brenda/Lizard. Strong M.
1. Chapter 1

I.

The bed cloths smelled like mildew, mildew and sweat.

I tried not to choke on the gritty pillowcase as he pounded into me from behind, hands forcing my body into the rusty-springed mattress and clouding my hips with purple bruises. Our room of splintery infrastructure and desert-worn furniture was stifled by the heat of the summer and our slapping bodies, and I could barely breathe. The head board bounced loudly against the curling wallpaper and he squeezed my hips harder, grunting like a dumb animal and drawling "bitch" and "take it" under his breath; I whimpered in that way that tasted, to him, like control, and he yanked my hair too hard and turned my head to the side so he could smash his horrible mouth against mine.

I fought to accept his thrusts rhythmically, for, if I fell out of step, his furious jerks would slam into my pelvis and send staticy pain traveling up my nerves, twisted and overused like subway tunnels. He went back to chewing violently on my neck, before sitting up more and leading my ass to follow, leathery hands sliding between my breasts and the sheets, knees digging into the mattress.

"Fuckin' like that, don'tcha, ya stupid bitch?" he tweaked forcefully.

I sniffled and nodded with what little motor ability I had at the moment.

"Anybody could be havin' ya right now, know that? Hades want ya real bad, so does Saturn."  
>I thought of Hades terrifyingly bulged muscles, of Saturn's towering frame, and shivered miserably.<p>

My birth canal felt as though it had been rubbed down with sandpaper even though it was soaking wet with mucus, and he tugged out suddenly, flipping me over and forcing himself back inside, hollering into the ceiling.

"Oh, you tight," he groaned, and I could feel his cock pulsing, our bodies slick with sweat. "Cry."

I obeyed, arching my back and offering my breasts up to his warped mouth, its lip cleft and jaw tilted sickeningly.

"_Shit!_"

I felt his stream burst hotly against my cervix and held back tears - I could only be so lucky for so long. He milked himself dry inside of me, before rolling off of me and into sleep.

"Goodnight," I whispered, and there was no response.

* * *

><p>Sometimes, when I was lucky, the sun would stain the hills purple in the evening and I'd slouch against an outcropping of rock, taking the heat as it was and reveling in my sweat. He was never far behind, especially once my stomach started to pooch out and form a noticeable bump beneath my stolen dresses, for Saturn's clan clashed violently with Jupiter's and my womb would be an easy target for an arrow or a bullet.<p>

"What you doin'?" he'd always ask, sending up wafts of sand and dust when he plopped down.

"Watching the sunset," I once answered.

He grunted, "Why? Same e'ery day."

"No, look, the desert's purple, see?" I pointed ahead, my five month swollen belly resting in my lap.

He squinted, his cleft lip giving him an appearance of sneering.

"I dunno, I just like it," I excused.

"Come 'ere," he said, getting up and leaning over to hook his arms under my armpits and hoist me to my feet.

"Where?"

"Follow."

* * *

><p>We traversed the rolling badlands of the hills, past the twisted trees and sparse tumbleweeds, his arm slung lazily over my shoulders as he remarked in clipped, grammatically-muddled phrases about what had happened near this mine entrance and that car's shell, this crater and that mountain peak.<p>

"Lost it there," he pointed to a boulder.

"Lost what?"

His hand ran suggestively up and down my arm, glove whispering.

"'Ginity."

I laughed a little, almost bitterly, "You lost your virginity in the sand?"

"Nah, was a car there."

It dawned upon me how he must have lost it, for Jupiter had led a young cousin away once, muttering about making him a man as a girl screamed from a tilted shed.

"I lost mine at a party."

"Like ta think I took it."

I cocked my head towards the sky, "Why are guys always like that?"

"Huh?"

"Guys always have to like... piss on everything and claim their territory."

"I ain't never pissed on ya."

"You know what I mean."

"Ain't a man 'less you own somethin'."

"Virginity's not a thing, you can't own it."

He grunted, annoyed, "Ain't literal, no."

"Literal? Big word, I'm impressed," I batted my eyelashes downwards and laughed, though God knows why.

His lip distorted itself more as he smiled and walked a little ways ahead of me, glimpsing here and there, extending his arm behind him and spreading his hand over my belly, "Stop. We here."

"We're where? This is the middle of- oh."

The railroad tracks were stitched across the cracked, baked earth, the mountains rose like a heart rate monitor's peaks, and, everywhere in between, the sun filled the desert with pink and purple and yellow light. The stainless steel flashed under the dusk and, for an instant, I felt unstained happiness.

"Oh my god..."

"Thought you'd like it."

"Never knew you were the sentimental type."

He slipped in front of me after a while and collapsed to his knees, fingers, perpetually twitchy and rough, pushing up my shirt in a strangely frenzied manner before he pressed his gnarled mouth against my belly.

"Hey, lil' baby."  
>And in my mind I heard the haunting words, the terrible, terrible, terrible "<em>Hey, lil' birdie<em>" and I had to restrain my urge to shriek, to collapse in tears under the memories... _LynnBobbyMom-_

"No," I silently scolded myself. "Tears only evaporate in this desert... they water no roots."

"Say 'hi' to Daddy," I then whispered weakly, still on the verge of hysterics.

My stomach rippled as the baby rolled over and wiggled into the sheltering arc of my rib, and Lizard sat up straighter, smiling into my stretched flesh and murmuring nonsense, one arm slung around my back and the other gripping my side just below my breast. His strangely heavy lids gave him an appearance of drunkness and I reached down to, for the first time, touch his gray shag of hair. Beneath my fingers, it was soft- unbelievably soft, in fact, and I ran my palm back and forth against his scalp.  
>He gave my stomach a clumsy, knocking kiss before standing back up and removing my hand, "What you doin'?"<p>

"Your hair's-"

"Ain't no dog," he loped away, gentleness gone.

I stumbled to catch up, "I wasn't saying you were."

He ran his gloved hand through my knotted tangles, "How you likin' that?"

"I don't mind."

He huffed, "You ain't no dog, neither."

"You always call me a bitch when you fuck me," I stated blatantly.

He stared back, blue eyes watered down with confusion.

"Bitch... it means female dog."

"Wha? Since when?"

"Always... so, you call me a dog."

"You is when I fuckin' ya."

His hands traveled along the curves of my widening hips, thumbs grazing my ass, and I feel a burgeoning need pressed against me.

"It's not even nighttime-"

"Who says fer nighttime anyhow?"

* * *

><p>He led me to one of the craters littered with overturned vehicles and remnants of lives lost, and guided me to a rusty-orange pick-up, hands flitting constantly to the small of my back. I went for the passenger door, only to draw back suddenly when I saw the flaking tattoo of a bloody hand on its handle; he crawled, mangy and bony, into the truck bed, lowering the hatch and helping me up, before slithering away. Moments later, he returned with matted blankets and a pillow that smelled distantly of hair gel and dandruff, and spread them over the rubber mats of the truck bed.<p>

"There are rattlesnakes out here."

I thought grimly of Mom... _Mom..._

"Yeah, so?"

"I don't know, this just seems kinda... gross."

"So?" he repeated, climbing behind me in and finding my spine, working his fingers in uneven circles along each vertebrae and relieving some tension that had built up in my muscles as they strained like suspension bridge wires, supporting my womb's growing load.  
>My hair stuck loosely to my face and I unfurled my back into his hands, "Won't everyone wond-"<br>His cleft lip partially sealed my mouth and I felt the downward tilt of his teeth; his hands sought my chest and I remembered that when Lizard wants to fuck, you fuck, even if it means rolling around, dirty and loud, in the back of a pick-up truck.

"This always happens in teen movies," I recalled of my past, my voice thrumming against his lips, and he pulled back to stare blankly at me.

"Someone always gets pregnant in the back of a pick-up truck."

"Ain't gettin' you pregn'nt."

"No, and it's not prom night, either... so, nevermind."

His brow knitted together, but, instead of querying about what, pray tell, "prom" meant, he just took to unfastening my dress's straps and sucking on my chest. I prayed that, despite my subconscious decision to dub the fetus "she," my child would be a boy, for, harsh and stereotypical as it may sound, I felt that boys were better designed to survive in such harrowed lands, to holler and chase down bloodied victims, all while living unperturbed by the horrible notion that home ended with the sands of Sector 16...

While his right hand wormed its way into my underwear, finger flicking back and forth against my clit, I thought of how my mother told me that girls needed soft hands to cradle them and prayers to guide them, and felt like spitting: I had only rough hands to grope me and empty, open space to hear my prayers... Mother's don't know best, the desert had taught me that, and I feared that my child, unwelcome as it was, would be reared by people no better than coyotes and would forget me in a wake of dust, would see me as Jupiter's Clan did: nothing more than an incubator for future generations, a pawn.

Pretend-God save us all, there is no place in this terrible world for the womb of any woman.


	2. Chapter 2

II.

"Do you know what today is?" I asked, sprawled out on a great slab that overlooked a nauseating drop.

"Nah."

"It's June 3rd."

He grunted before scratching at the sunburned, blistered skin of his shoulder.

"I'm twenty today," my excitement was waning in the face of his disinterest.

He squinted at me, blue eyes glinting a whitish shade under the sun as it pulsed with heat, "Huh."

"Yeah," I played with the faux leather of my flimsy flip-flops. "I don't feel it, though."

I bit back the urge to say that it was because I hadn't been given the chance to cleanly finish my teenage years.

"People don't never feel the age they supposed to be."

"No, I guess not..."

Suddenly, it seemed queer to me that, though I carried his child, I didn't even know how many years he had tucked under his lethal belt.

"Lizard?"

"Huh?" he had begun shading his eyes (bored, restless, and hungry) in order to seek out Goggle's hunched form.

"How old are you?"

He shrugged.

"Are you not going to tell me?"

"Eh."

I wrinkled my nose and accidentally said, "You're just like my mother."

The look he gave me was borderline bewildered and I suddenly felt sick.

"I didn't mea- See, be-because, outside, older women... well, they keep their age a secret because no one wants to seem _old..._"

"E'rybody get old, 'less they die first."

"Yeah... I guess it is kind of silly, isn't it?" I thought of my past obsessions, of my need to bronze my skin and bleach my hair (things I now avoided in the desert sun), my phobia of wrinkles and constant search for premature gray strands. "People are just scared that they'll stop being sexy."

A beat.

"But seriously, don't make me guess... Or do you not know?"

"'Course I know, don't be stupid."

With some effort I sat myself up, supporting my body by putting my arms behind me, "I'll start small: thirty-five."

"Nah."

"Thirty-eight?"

"Nah."

_Jesus._

"Forty?"

He picked at the flaking flesh on the back of his neck without answering me.

"Do you not like birthdays?"

"Dun matter. You either born or you not."

"I-"

Then he was gone, leaping up in a flurry of sand as soon as his walkie-talkie gurgled, promising that a hot red Corvette was streaming down the road with its top down.

"Get up," he barked. "Goggle say they here."

* * *

><p>"I'm not doing this," I said bitterly as Lizard lathered blood on my neck and breast bone.<p>

"Shut the fuck up."

The blood felt warm and sticky in the stifling heat.

He wiped a large handful across my belly, "They definitely stop now."

"What am I even supposed to do when they stop?"

"_Improvise,_" he hissed, shoving me ahead.

* * *

><p>And, so, I wore the theatrics like a tightly fitted dress hemmed with arm waving, stitched together by silvery shouts, and buttoned up with labored breathing for good measure, and, for this, the driver stomped on the brakes and skidded to a halt in the middle of the dirt road. Dust flew up in a heavy cloud.<p>

"_Help!_" I shrieked, clutching my stomach and stumbling over the rocks. "_Please, help!_"

"Don, she's _pregnant!_" the woman in the passenger seat shouted, pointing at me hysterically.

I fell to my knees, reaching up and gumming helplessly.

"_Oh, Jesus. Ma'am, what- come here, come here!_" he leaped over car door and lifting me to my feet, before towing me towards the car and helping me to lie down in the back seat.

His hair was a gelled, bleach blonde peak and hers matched his in its manicured waves - California types, most likely, I thought, or Phoenix city natives. It took every muscle in my body to hold back from screaming at them to run while the still had the time.  
>In the corner of my eye, I saw Lizard rounding the nearest hill.<p>

"What- what happened?"

"I- I don't know, I don't remember! All I know is my baby- _she hasn't moved at all since I woke up!_"

In reality, the baby was jumping and twitching in confusion from all of my running and shouting, and I prayed that they wouldn't see.

"Okay, okay... there's a gas station back there- are you even with anyone? _Shit, are you-_"

The attack was almost welcome once it came, for the guilt was straining on me and the last thing I craved was to get to know these people, to experience their kindness as I brought them their demise on a dingy platter... The pick axe spiraled through the air and into the woman's head with a near silent swoosh, and her face briefly flinched in that way that dead faces are wont to do. He stared, then screamed, propelling himself out of the car and scrabbling for the hills, and I almost called out to warn him, but Lizard's spike strip sailed through the air and punctured his neck too quickly, sending small jets of hot blood spraying onto the desert floor. Pluto smiled and laughed like a goon, spit soaking his lips as he hauled her limp body out, and Lizard whooped, dragging the man's corpse around in the sand just for the hell of it, its throat splitting open further.

"_Fuck yeah!_"

I stretched out in the backseat, plugged my ears until they hurt, and pretended that I was riding towards a Californian beach, where the air was thick with salt and the only sounds were the caws of begging seagulls and girls giggling through volleyball games... I pretended that it was my parent's silver anniversary and we had just made it to the hotel: hot showers and cold margaritas, soft beds and tightly packed bowls of weed...

The things we cling to, I swear...


	3. Chapter 3

III.

I couldn't stop watching the way that it slipped down the gleaming tresses of faux hair, Big Mama's fingers fat and whitish around the handle as she dragged the comb up and down, up and down, up and down the wig. Venus was stretched across the filthy, matted carpet, clicking her Lincoln Logs together and, with a scrunched up look of displeasure, pulling them apart, as the tiny, electric fan whirred and Divorce Court played statically through the TV speakers. Ruby was laying on her stomach, tickling Mercury as he squirmed and squealed, before rolling over and staring at me with her big eyes swollen like bubbles.

"What's up, Rubes?"

She didn't respond, just reached her hand out, its fingers warped and fused together, and pressed it beneath my navel. The baby stirred and she giggled, pulling back her hand.

"It don' like me!"

"No, no, she does that all the time."

Ruby smiled her scarce-toothed smile and replaced her hand.

I transfixed my eyes on the television screen as a hefty man with five o'clock shadow insisted he had only hooked his wife in the jaw after she'd kneed him the groin.

"I didn't- I mean, I didn't mean to hit her, it just happened. She was coming at me-"

"She was coming at you?" the judge demanded, overacting for the camera. "This woman, who can't be more than a hundred-twenty pounds, _scared_ you? You had to _defend_ yourself?"

The crowd responded with yowls and hisses of disapproval, and Mama shook her head disapprovingly, still brushing that wig she so rarely wore.

I remembered the first time that Lizard saw me and I saw him, and how his fist had connected with my face when I screamed and refused to part my legs, refused to "give it" to him... I wondered if Jupiter had ever struck Mama to put her in her place...  
>The baby made a movement that felt almost like a shiver beneath my skin and Ruby rested her head in my rapidly disappearing lap, dozing slightly and whispering through my uterine walls. I skated my palm over her silky but thin hair and hoped that her follicles wouldn't follow in the footsteps of her mother's - she needed something to cloak her wretched face. I wondered about my own child: would its hair fall out one day, too? Would that even matter in comparison to the other bodily horrors it was promised to take on? Why did they insist upon passing on their own genes, chromosomes more tangled than dead tree limbs, when the fate of their offspring was written in the desert's hot, hot sand? My mind strayed and I wondered for a split second if my sister had shared similar worries while Catherine was inside of her- <em>no<em>... No, there was no place for that... and, besides, Doug hadn't had a harelip and grotesquely angled jaw, so why would she have worried?

We all jumped simultaneously, Mama's rocking chair's legs crying out sharply when she jolted in it, when Lizard rapped violently against the glass's gritty pane. He leered at Ruby, who leaped away from me - they had never mended the fences torn down by the storm that was my family's arrival in the desert, and they never would. I hoisted myself up, careful not to tip forward, and headed onto the sagging porch.

"_What?_" I snapped.

His eyes became half-lidded and he gave me that stomach turning smile he always wore when something I'd dread was to occur, "What you doin'?"

"_Why?_"

"Nevermind, get to you later. Need Ruby now."

"I d- what do you need Ruby for?"

"Papa say she old 'nough, get job now."

"A-"

"Goggle watcher, Big Brain planner, she need job now, too."

I narrowed my eyes, "What are you going to make her do?"

"Don' matter."

"It does to me."

"She help in food shed."

My stomach lurched, "_Fuck no_."

"You ain't her mama. Papa say she help, then she help. Call her, she ain't gon' come for me."

"Ruby won't even be able to do that."

"Say you."

"Says common sense. She's _fifteen!_"

"So? I do this when was I ten. You call-"

"I'm not calling her."

"What then? You gon' do it?"

"No-"

"No, 'cause you got job. Call Ruby."

I turned weakly back to the door and knocked against the frame, the baby spiking me in the ribs.

"Ruby? Come out here, Sweetie."

She looked up at me nervously, but obeyed, and Mama eyed me wearily.

"Wha?"

"Your daddy says that you have a new job now-"

"I help wit' babies," she gestured back to living room behind us.

"Ain't babies no more," Lizard cut in. "Don't need you, anyway, they got Mama."

"But when there more babies-"

"There ain't gon' be no more, Mama ain't got 'nother in her."

Ruby pointed, her eyes downcast, towards my own rounded abdomen, which seemed to strike an angry chord in Lizard.

"My baby _ain't_ gonna need you, it got Brenda," he seethed through his awful, jagged teeth. "I take you to shed now, you learn how to cut meat off."

She whimpered and tried to back towards the doorway, but a muscle jumped in Lizard's bicep and he grabbed her arm furiously, yanking her off of the porch steps as she sobbed.

"You useless 'less you start doin' somethin', don' you know? Now get, and I be there in a minute."

Ruby skittered towards the shack, and I knew she wouldn't go in until Lizard forced her, so put off was she by the heinous smells and evil things she was bound to see.

He stepped back up the steps and I backed against the wall near the whining porch swing.

"What wrong with you?"

"You shouldn't-"

"It ain't my business, it what Papa say."

"You didn't have to be such a fucking asshole to her," I argued.

He shrugged that off, "She wouldn't of gone."

I bristled when he leaned his shoulder against the side of the house and began to run his hand along the contours of my cheek bones, "You pretty."

"The last thing I want to do right now is sleep with you."

He nuzzled his nose into the crook of my neck and rubbed along my stomach, "Only wanna fuck 'cause you pretty."

I shook my head, ponytail flopping between my shoulder blades, "You'd fuck a girl three times my size with two heads if it meant you'd get to put your dick in something."

"Ain't true," he was sucking my jawline and I pushed him back a little.

"Your _mother_ is right behind us."

Without warning, his hand shot up and squeezed my left breast, "She watchin' TV and combin' her wig. Ain't gonna see nothin.'"

"Cut it the fuck out," I demanded.

There was a lull in conversation as he breathed against my throat.

"What's my job?"

"Huh?"

"You said that I have a job, what is it?"

"You doin' it right now," he patted my stomach and gave me that smirk that he knew I loathed, before stepping off of the porch and heading to make Ruby do the unthinkable.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

When the sun dropped into the desert, the temperature peeled away, making the typically blistering sands frigid and sending the reptiles scattering to their burrows. I always went to bed early, partially because I was cold and worn down by the pregnancy, but mainly because I wished to flee to the recesses of our shambled home and have some hours curled up alone, free of the horrible, glowering faces of the Family. On the night after Ruby was forced to work in the slaughter house, I retired long before the sky dimmed and my skin broke out in goosebumps, laying on my side and expecting to have a handful of hours to brood by myself. However, after only twenty or so minutes of coasting over sleep, the antique lamp clicked on and sickly yellow light washed over my face through the sheets; I squinted down hard and someone sat beside me on the bed.  
>"Ruby-"<p>

I threw back the sheets and found Lizard sitting on the bed, boots shedding dirt on our comforter. He usually only returned in the cryptic hours of the night, slipping beside me and bringing with him the reeks of the desert and, sometimes, a tourist trap well done.

"What do you want?"

"You mad."

"No shit," I turned away from him with some struggle.

His hand slithered along my shoulder, "Stop it."

"Fuck you."

He laid down, pressing his scrawny chest against my back, bone grating on spine, "You ain't gotta be mad. Ruby fucked up, dropped good meat in the sand. Now she just gonna run knives to the pump and wash 'em. You gone and got your way on account of her not doin' nothin' right."

"What's Jupe gonna say?" I asked.

"Don't matter. Ruby helpin', and that what he say she do."

I shifted slightly and looked over my shoulder at him, still, after all that time, perturbed by the ghastly view of his ripped lip, of his warped jaw and blistered skin, "Couldn't you just wash the meat off?"

"Did."

"So why was her dropping it such a big deal? I'm sure you've done it, too," my stomach was beginning to roil at the thought of what the meat was.

"She clumsy. Gonna cut off a finger if she ain't careful," was all he grumbled, as if I hadn't said a word.

The blankets were warm and cocooned around me, and I almost took comfort in the way his sharp pelvis pressed against me, cradling my backside, "Thank you."

I stretched my neck and kissed his contorted mouth, something I had, really, never done outside of our slippery coupling.

"I didn't do nothin,'" his brow crinkled.

I rolled to face him, burgeoning stomach forcing a universe between us, and traced the rigid contours of his shallow face, "I don't think I believe you."

He kissed me roughly to shut me up, hand gripping the back of my skull, before pulling away and asking, "Baby sayin' hi?"

"Hi to my ribs, yes."

"Mama never had none your problems."

"Big Mama's a little more padded than me."

He laughed that strange, broken-up chuckle of his and brushed hair out of my face, "You belly achin'."

"Excuse me? You try lugging this around without complaining."

"Can't."

"Exactly."

"Then you try takin' a pistol whippin' to the head or steak knife in yer leg."

"I-"

"Zactly. You walkin' on sunshine."

I think he expected me to simper over his manliness or apologize for my obvious flimsiness, but instead I just shoved his legs away, "Get your feet off the bed, your shoes are fucking dirty."

Under his breath I heard him grunt "bitch," but still he stripped off his shoes along with his vest, dingy undershirt, and baggy pants.

Outside of our gritty window, coyotes howled, and he crawled under me so I could thank him again and again.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

I sat on the crimped hood of one of Jeb's many rusting vehicles, its slouching form propped on four cinder blocks encased in desert weeds and headlights cracked open, filled with dust. From inside Jeb's miserable shack of a home, I heard the raised voices of Cyst, Goggle, and Jupiter radiating through the thin boards and warped glass, but what they were saying was still obscured. Lizard had, for some time, been inside as well, and I had caught his voice shouting louder than the others with its strange twang, before he stormed out, the screen door bouncing violently on its spring hinges behind him.

"What's going on?" I asked warily, my dress's fabric glued to my back by sweat.

He grunted, leaning against the car, "He a goddamned pansy."

"Why?"

His only response was to shake his head and squint outward, one eye pinched tighter than the other.

"Don't wanna help no more," he remarked finally.

"Doesn't he say that every other week?"

"Guess, yeah. This time seem different, though."

"How come?"

"He say he thinkin' of leavin'."

"He wouldn't be able to tell if he did leave, I mean... that would end up getting him into trouble, too."

"Was gonna say that."

"Why aren't you still in there, then?"

"Papa say if anyone feel like jumpin' the old shit we outta leave, that it won't help nothin'."

"Did he say something about Big Mama again?" That occurrence had resulted in Lizard delivering a purple welt to the side of Jeb's head, as Jupiter restrained himself from knocking in the man's cranium.

"Nah," he scratched at the flaking skin on the nape of his neck.

"Then what-"

He leaned his head against the car, hand working its way to the small of my back and kneading the muscles along my lower spine, "Don't matter."

"Lizard-"

He glared up at me, "I say it don't matter, then it don't matter. Ain't got nothin' to do with- well, it ain't the deal I'm makin' it out to be."

"So, it does have to do with me?"

It was several minutes before he responded; he just fixed his eyes to my stomach and watched as it trembled and twitched, the baby's movements having not long ago begun to show through the fabric of my clothes.

"Don't matter," he replied finally, patting my belly. "Jeb just lowdown. You got more goin' on in your head then he done thought up in his whole life."

I was taken aback, surely, by this sudden compliment - compliments, like gentle gestures or helping hands, were something Lizard rarely dealt to anyone. There were times when, after his typically short fuse had been snuffed out by one thing or another, he'd agree to walk with me along the tempering evening sands and listen as I spoke of even the most inane workings of the outer world; sometimes, he'd even glance at me and appear almost envious, endlessly fascinated. Our ways were not his ways, I was reminded of that under red-rimmed sunsets, and it seemed to both frustrate and enrapture him.

"Thank you..." I said softly, almost not trusting him. "You think so?"

He made a noise in the back of his throat that sounded distantly like "uh-huh" and continued grinding his fingers into my back.

"What're you doing?"

"Hm?"

"To my back?"

He shrugged before moving over to rest his head in my limited lap, scalp coruscating with a thick layer of sweat, and sighed against my thighs. I hesitantly brushed my hand along his head and, unlike the last time I had attempted this, he didn't jerk away with an acidic retort; I pushed under his messy shear of hair and let my fingers slip and skid down his wet scalp. I knew that, when I felt along his leathery temples, their skin creased by premature wrinkles like fault lines between tectonic plates, something was terribly wrong. Lizard was a force of the desert, a creature whose ribcage and limbs vibrated with violent wantings, a creature that skulked low to the ground and whipped life away with steel spikes and shotgun slugs for purpose and for pleasure... he rarely had a calmed state and he never sought out the comfort he was seeking now.

He pulled away and hoisted himself onto the hood of the car, the veins in his arms beating strangely beneath his skin, and laid down, tugging me to do the same, eyes wintry and bleary, heavily lidded and staring at me but nothing at all. He shifted onto his side, fingers feeling along my face, something he'd done before out of perverted fascination and did now as if he was trying to to put my features to memory; his hand hovered over my mouth, strings from his tattered, leather gloves tickling my chin.

"What?" I asked, voice as sluggish as the lulling heat.

I felt like I was being tested out in some way when he stamped his torn mouth to my lips and held it there, until I rolled onto my side to face him and removed them, replaced them, removed them.

I thought of the kissing that I'd seen before, that I'd felt before, and imagined all of the people that I wished I had kissed. To my guilt, I parted my lips and let Lizard in when I thought of Doug; his hands squeezed my shoulder and pressed against the back of my head, behind my ears. A strange twisting made itself known in my gut and, unconsciously, I clenched my thighs together in that way teens do when _that _feeling comes. The world felt hazy and unreal, and the heated metal of the car burned my skin.

Slowly, strained and seething voices stomped out onto Jeb's porch and undulated with the waves of noonday heat, before breaking off suddenly and causing Lizard to jerk away and sit up. Cyst, whom I had found to be the most genial of the hills' males, had already turned away in embarrassment, muttering under his breath and collecting some tools he'd left near the well. In contrast, Jupiter was frozen in a state of utter disapproval and Goggle looked as though he had just seen something that he couldn't begin to grasp, which, I suppose, as a meeker figure that shuttered under his wrathful older brother's shadow, he had.

Lizard leapt off of the car and slung his spike strip aggressively over his shoulder, storming away and leaving me to adjust my dress straps and flush terribly as the three other men departed, Jupiter shaking his head.

For a long time, I sat there alone, wondering what it truly was Jeb had said...


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Goggle was a fleeting presence in the Test Village, a sort of phantom that came and went without so much as rustling the clotheslines. He was more docile than Lizard and certainly far quieter, but, it seemed, more embittered by his condition and prone to seeking isolation; like Ruby, he seemed unable to relate to his own kind, though, unlike her, this was spawned not from innocence. Many hill dwellers, in fact, would whisper from time to time that the nuclear fallout had done more than damage the cells that constructed his face - "screws ain't loose for that one, they flat out missin'," Hades had said once when Goggle, for no apparent reason, perked up in the middle of a visit from other clans and simply slithered out of the door. Despite his off-kilter nature, he seemed capable of making up his mind on one thing: he disliked me enormously, and took to glowering at me so obviously that I could sense a prickling resentment radiating off of him like noxious gas.

On the night after Lizard and I's bizarre encounter outside the gas station, I was sitting on the floor of the dilapidated living room and patching up Mercury's torn teddy bear, when I heard Goggle's low hiss and the rise of Lizard's uneducated twang coming from the kitchen.

"_Ain't right, Lizard. She from Outside._"

"_Fuck off, Goggle, Hades got Outsider girls, too._"

"_You dun treat her like Hades treats his girls._"

"_Yeah, maybe that why she ain't dead._"

"_Outsider blood. Yer baby gonna have Outsider blood-_"

Suddenly, Lizard did away with the whispering, shouting, "_I say 'fuck off' so, fuck off!_"

"She don't belong here! And after yer baby born you ain't gonna get rid o' her!"

"Ain't your-"

"You ain't jus' usin' her for baby like you said you was gonna! Kissin' her like that ain't got nothin' to do with keeping the Family 'live! That baby o' yers is a _fuckin' mistake!_ Jeb was right, he oughta put that girl down-"

There was then the terrible sound of metal connecting with bone and a loud thump as a body hit the floor, followed by frenzied scuffling and grunting. Goggle rushed out through the flaking threshold of the kitchen, tripping over his own feet with a great dose of blood spilling from a gash in his forehead.  
>He snarled at me, before turning back and shouting, "<em>You bein' a fool!<em>"

By the time Lizard stepped into the living room, gored frying pan in hand, Goggle had vanished into the night, probably fleeing to the hills and the cold cradling they offered him. Lizard turned to me, looking lankier and far more boyish than I'd ever seen before, and the frying pan clattered to the floor beside his gritty work boots.

"What you doin' in here?" his voice cracked slightly.

"Fixing... fixing Mercury's bear for him," I held it up, hand quivering slightly. "Jeb said I should be... what? Put down?"

"It don't-"

"Like a lame dog?" I felt anger roiling inside of me; my life was not my own and I could no longer bear the decisions being made for me. "Is that what he meant?"

"He say he feel his soul goin' bad as he stands by and watches what's happenin' to you."

"_So killing me is better?_" I shouted.

"He say, he wanna put you outta your misery."

"That's not his call!"

"No, it ain't. I done tell him, then I went outside."

"I mean, what? Did he think he could just shoot me or something?"

Lizard sat down on the carpet some distance from me, "Did."

"Wha- I was just exaggerating-"

"I tell him I'm gonna get inside his house, turn him inside out, if that the case. He dun say nothin' after that."

"I don't think I want to die," I said softly, feeling my eyes stinging. "I don't think that'd be better yet-"

He crawled across the floor, drawing me inwards and melding his mouth to mine, coarse hands pressing against my skin as he pulled me down on top of him.

"You don't gotta die yet."

My hair had grown too long and surrounded our faces like soft, spiraled staircases as he returned to my lips fervently, pushing the hem of my dress to the middle of my back and gripping down with barbed fingers. He pushed his mouth, buckled lip and all, to my throat's pulse point, and ground his crotch against mine despite the mounting space my abdomen forced between us. In the stuttering candlelight of his murky lantern, I saw our shadows melting and reforming on the walls and, for reasons I never quite understood, it made me ache and I let him yank my dress off as my hands undid zippers and buckles on their own accord.

He bit my jawline, bucking up into me and murmuring something I couldn't quite decipher.

"What?"

He panted against my sternum, hands grabbing for the waist I no longer seemed to have, "_Ain't no one's say._"

I felt sweat fermenting in every crease of my skin and my knees throbbed when I repeated, "What?"

"_You ain't gotta go nowhere._"

I rocked back and pulled forward slowly, sucking in a burning breath, "_What if I want to?_"

His eyes were dilated and confused, but he said nothing, burying his face in my chest and offering a muffled groan. The baby rolled over and stretched then, curling into a hard ball in the side of my stomach and wiggling against the outer wall of my uterus; we were pressed together too tightly and he felt it, hand hesitantly brushing against the part of my belly that was puckered out from the child's pushing.

"_Don't go._"

My Outsider blood thrummed beneath my skin, surrounding my child in a net of veins and arteries, keeping it as warm until the fateful day I would be forced to push it from my body and deliver it into a harsh reality. I hoped it was happy or at least at peace inside of me, despite how cramped and constricting my womb had become, despite the darkness and constant sound of my internal workings, for this was the greatest labor of love I believed I could ever offer it... this would be the only period, I thought, when my voice, though muffled, would comfort it.

Lizard pressed his sweaty forehead against my shoulder before I could climb off, "_Don't go._"


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

I awoke the next morning under a horrible, stifling heat - the act of simply sitting up covered my back and chest in a sweep of sweat, and a blistering light bled through our window's cracked, wooden blinds. I didn't remember straggling up to bed in the late hours of the night and, with Lizard sprawled out beside me, arm thrown lazily over my side as he drooled onto the pillow, I had a feeling I may have been carried or coaxed up the stairs. He grunted and his chest, equally drenched in sweat, pressed against my back - our fan was heavy with dust and I briefly wondered if I had ever seen it pinwheeling.

"Lizard?"

His fingers trembled for an instant, then nothing.

I kicked the sticky sheets away and felt encompassed in heat, dreadful, wobbling heat, heat too strong even for a summer in Yuma Flats; I shifted onto my back and shook Lizard roughly, his head slipping to rest against my clavicle and eyelids flickering.

I had, I suppose, dressed before dusk, an ill-fitting cami plastered to my breasts and riding up just beneath my navel, and I felt endlessly uncomfortable, horrifically bloated with fat and baby and water weight. My ankles had lost their curves as they swelled and my spine was as disjointed as the broken down tracks winding in and out of the mines, forever twinging and aching. My skin steamed, my breasts ached and stomach roiled; my ribs thrummed beneath the baby's feet, my bladder strained and skin slowly split into stretch marks that looked like tears in the fabric of a well-worn Raggedy Ann. More and more, I felt as though I'd become a spectator in my own body, a detached stranger - I had lost so much control, for regardless of what I thought, the baby continued to grow and crowd my organs into my chest, it continued to kick and roll until my stomach rippled and kidneys throbbed. When Lynn had been pregnant, I had simply seen the baby as being along for the ride, but it wasn't so... I was miserable, truly, from the physical demand of it all.  
>Lizard mumbled into my shoulder and I felt the torn flesh of his lip moving against my skin; his hand sought out my globed abdomen and pressed flush against it.<br>"What?" I asked, but he only shook his head ever so slightly and slid back into sleep...

* * *

><p>I did try to explain it to him a few evenings later, as we sat before the chain link fence decked in warning signs - how I felt as though my body was no longer mine to claim and how the baby's independence was almost frightening, but his burnt eyebrow just pulled together in the mellowing light.<p>

"Don't make sense."

Exasperated, I demanded, "How doesn't it?"

"Livin' in someone ain't 'independent.' I take it out right now, it gonna die."

"But, I mean... she's alive. She does things without me already."

He squinted at me, growing weary, "What, you think it not gonna be alive 'til it gets born?"

"Well... no, I guess not. I just hate the feeling of having to share myself. And the way she moves gets weirder every day-"

"Thinkin' too much," he huffed, shaking his head.

"Oh?"

"You always lookin' into things nobody else looks into. Just gonna worry your head."

"Yeah," I admitted; my agreeing with him was a rarity in itself. "Maybe."

Whether I liked to admit it or not, the father of my child was no genius, he wasn't learned like Doug or experienced in any field like my own father; he was gruff and, though clever when survival demanded it, uneducated at best. He couldn't place himself in my position because he simply didn't know how and that was all there was to it.

I had laid down then, defeated, and rested my head in his lap. He placed an uncharacteristic hand on my scalp and thumbed my follicles, fingers drifting to my belly and gently kneading it until the baby rolled slightly.

"Gonna worry yourself brain sick," he muttered under his breath.

* * *

><p>But, that morning, before he knew of my sour thoughts and discomforts, I slipped out from underneath him and swam through the hot spell until I made it to our front door. The sagging porch creaked beneath my toes and I wandered the shifting sand of the Village's main "street," seating myself uneasily in one of the swing set's rubber seats, praying that the old chains wouldn't give way. I twisted around and then released, spinning for a brief second, and finding Ruby standing before me when the swing straightened itself.<p>

"Hi," she said softly.

"Hey, Ruby."

"I sit?" she pointed to the vacant seat.

"Yeah, sure."

She adjusted her skirt in the swing and stared at me.

"What's up?"

"Somethin' bad happen last night?" she queried.

"What? No, no... just an argument, is all."

Her lips bowed downwards, "After I seen Goggle all bloody, I went to your house."

"Did you knock?" I asked hesitantly.

"No, heard bad noises."

My skin was flushed to its capacity from the heat, but had it not been, an ugly blush would have made my fair skin patchy and red, "I- nothing- Ruby, you know you really shouldn't listen in on people-"

"You not hurt?"

I looked everywhere but at her and blurted abruptly, "Ruby, do you know what sex is?"

"Uh-huh," she replied proudly. "Ain't stupid. You get _babies_ from it."

I noticed that Lizard, partially dressed, was suddenly leaning against the rotting beam of our porch, arms folded across his chest as he stared upwards, unable to hear us.

"Lizard's not beating me, Ruby," I promised.

"What sex got-"

"Nothing, forget about it... or ask Mama."

She narrowed her eyes and asked very seriously, "You ain't _kissed_ Lizard, have you?"

Her innocence shown, white to black, snow against hot tar.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

I was sleeping when it happened.

* * *

><p>Two people – a man and a woman – had been spotted earlier that day, straggling along the crags of the hills, their clothing and skin already crusted with drying blood, the woman's arm hanging limply in a sling made out of a torn t-shirt. They had fled, Jupiter and the others could only assume, from Hades' or Saturn's clan, only to become horribly lost in the glaring, repetitious expanse of the desert, delirious from heat exhaustion. Goggle had spent hours training the warped glass of his binoculars on them, watching as they continuously stumbled and the woman broke down into tears more than once.<p>

The entire village seemed to be holding its breath ever since, the buildings sucking their sides in anticipation, but still no one moved a muscle. I had almost been able to hear Lizard's bones grating as he restrained himself, and Jupiter spent the afternoon pacing back and forth in his dusty dining room… but the clan could only watch, could only wait to see if the pair was being stalked by those whom they had only just escaped.

"I say they batin' us," Lizard had huffed as Jupiter cast an impatient glance out the sand-crusted windows. "They let them two 'scape so we'd try and get 'em. Then they attack."

"Saturn ain't bothered us fer months," Jupiter insisted, fiddling with his walkie-talkie. "No reason he'd start now."

I had been sitting stiffly on the couch as Lizard slouched beside me, hand toying with the edge of my shorts and pressing flush against my thigh whenever Jupiter wasn't looking.

"Why else ain't they lookin' for 'em? You talked to Hades yet?"

"I would'a told ya," Jupiter snapped. "He ain't answered. Might be out stalkin' them two right now, fer all we know."

Lizard ran a twitching hand over my domed stomach, "Well, if Saturn ain't batin' us, you can do what you want, but I ain't waitin' much longer."

"You ain't doin' nothin' til I say. 'Nother hour won't kill you."

"They got backpacks, both of 'em," he rubbed his knuckles along the side of my belly. "Food, prol'y."

Jupiter had glared over his shoulder at me then, "She got plenty from Jeb."

He left at that, boards groaning beneath his boots as he went to speak with Big Brain, and I smelled disapproval drifting off of him, thick and spicy as sweat.

Lizard leaned forward and pulled at the frays of his gloves, sweat creased between his neck and shoulders from the sweltering heat, before sitting back again and shuffling his feet.

"Hate this waitin'."

"Hm," I replied, staring at a fly that was rousting above the stilled grandfather clock.

He flattened his hand against the front of my stomach and held it there, "Why ain't I feelin' her move?"

I rolled my eyes, "I already told you, she's sleeping. She was moving plenty this morning."

"That was this morning."

He started to push and poke at the surface of my abdomen in search of a response, but none came.

"She sick," he hunched over and pushed his face into his palms. "You ain't eatin' 'nough."

"Whatever they've got in their backpacks, it's not going to be a lot. Jupe's right, I can just get food from Jeb."

"Then you gotta walk."

I threw my arms out, exasperated, "What is up with you?"

"There been a baby born in Hades' village durin' the night," he said suddenly.

"I- what?"

But his walkie-talkie fizzed and he was off without a single word.

* * *

><p>It was hours later before I was awoken by shouts and scuffling on Lizard and I's drooping porch.<p>

"We got him! I say we got him, you go check on Brenda!"

Our screen door was ripped open and spooked footsteps trampled up the stairs to our bedroom. The guttering, old-photo-colored light beamed on and Lizard, swamped with sweat and blood, fell through the threshold.

I bolted upright, "What the hell is going on? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he gasped. "I'm fine… You fine?"

"I- I mean I was. What in god's name-"

"Goggle done got shot right in the arm."

"By _who?_"

"Scorpio."

"_Who?_"

"Son of Saturn's. Fuckin' looked right at Goggle and shot him, claimed he was aimin' for the man we'd taken down."

"Is he okay?" though part of me was almost pleased Goggle had been struck.

"I dunno. It don't go no further than his arm, stuck in the bone, but I dunno how we gonna get it out."

"You've been shot before…"

"Yeah, but it went right through, missed bone" he pointed at a swollen scar on his shoulder. "But that don't matter, you fine?"

"I already said I was-"

He nearly collapsed onto the bedclothes, "Anyone come 'round here?"

"No, of course not, I would've said-"

Without warning he pressed the side of his crooked face to my belly, hands landing on my hips, and I could feel his brows crimp together.

"We're fine, I swear," I said, surprised.

He sighed and clutched at my lower half, "Can feel her movin' now."

"Uh-huh."

"So she gonna be fine…"

His vocal chords quavered and I touched his gaunt cheekbone, "What was it that you said about a baby being born in Hades' village?"

"One of Chameleon's girls had a baby."

"So?"

"It was lyin' across in her belly, not down, so they had to cut it out."

My throat caught, "So she's dead?"

"Yeah."

"And the baby?"

"Didn't get out fast enough, died inside her."

I didn't speak for a long time, grazing my hand along his grayed scalp as he held his ear to my stomach and felt the baby's sleepy, lulling movements that swayed my womb.

"Lizard?"

He grunted softly.

"What happens if Goggle dies?"

"Scorpio gotta die."

"Why?"

"If we don't do nothin' they come down on us either way, and like hell… like hell am I lettin' that fuck get 'way with killin' him."

"It wouldn't some kind of… war, right?"

"That's might be what it's gotta be."


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

The days hobbled by on tense, strained joints, the women, children, and wounded Goggle confined to the inner rooms of Mama and Jupiter's home, and the men patrolling the edges of the clan's territory.

Up until that point, I had never truly realized how firmly etched into the baked earth the boundaries of the clans were – though Jupiter's claimed the largest Test Village, they held onto only a thin artery of mines, with Hades acquiring the rest.

"They like it better that way," Big Brain had wheezed. "Hades grew up in the mines, and lot of people that joined him, they get sick from the sun."

"But why'd we get this village instead of Saturn?"

"Old story. Blood feuds. Better to forget about it for now."

The food supply tapered lower than it had in months, with trips to Jeb's being too dangerous and what little remained being split between eleven mouths. On some occasions, I realized that Lizard would sit too close to me at the gritty dinner table or on the floor, and, when he thought me to be distracted, push tiny portions of canned vegetables or jerky onto my plate. I called him out on it and he simmered in return, saying he ate as much as he damn well pleased and that I sure as hell wasn't his mama.

The dust storms kicked up, too, over those weeks, tumbling past the window in great and terrible tides and whistling through gaps in the windows and cracks in the walls. Everyone's hair – even Mama's wig – became heavy with crusts of itchy sand and dust, and, when Lizard roamed in from guard duty, his hair would be so dense it would crackled beneath his twitching fingers. Venus, already a handful at best, whined constantly over the sand that nettled her lopsided scalp, and even Mars, the quietest of them all, would whimper softly from time to time, grit scratching at his corneas.

And, all the while, Goggle laid limply on his makeshift cot, the bullet having been dredged from his arm by Big Mama and a pair of rusty tweezers, his wound left a tinge of sickish green. Sometimes, he would sweat and jerk, though, other times, we found him able to prop himself on his elbows and converse in garbled, clipped sentences.

_Better_, I thought. _Get better, or God help us all._

* * *

><p>One night, when the dust had calmed, I saw a scissure of lightning briefly perforate the sky and heard the foreboding crack of dry thunder rattle through the hills.<p>

"Rain?" I asked Big Mama curiously.

She shrugged, "Probably just a lightnin' storm."

She glanced down at me, sitting on the floor against a peeling wall, and I noticed a glaze of pity that had come to overtake her eyes each time she looked now at me. It was new, or perhaps I simply hadn't been as observant before, but, either way, it made my heart sag miserably and I'd come to flee from it, up into one of the two guest bedrooms in the house, cradling myself until dawn. Lizard hadn't come to bed for over a week and a half – we barely talked, in fact – for he wore away the nights by stalking on guard duty or passing out in a heap on the living room floor.

On the night when the lightning came, I eventually retreated to my designated bedroom, with its tattered sheets and single, dust-clabbered lamp, and stretched out on the bed to read a worn copy of _War of the Worlds_ that had been looted from some faceless van – I was careful with the frail pages, pretending that, one day, I would return it.

As I sat, back persistently throbbing and skin irritated by the endless, goddamned dust, I heard rough voices from outside and the door eased open slowly. The wild-haired, long-coated silhouette of Papa Jupiter stood squarely in the hallway and Lizard slithered into the room, his back to me.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, Cyst got it."

He shoved the door closed with his shoulder and turned towards the bed, his red flannel shirt splattered at random with dark, blackish patches.

"Is that _blood?_" I asked.

"Huh- Oh, yeah. Coyote blood. Caught one. Cyst's skinnin' and saltin' it tonight."

He always pronounced coyote as "kie-oat," something that at times irked me, but, in that moment, softened me instead.

"Oh, okay."

He stripped it off and kicked it into the far corner of the room, "What you doin'?"

"Reading."

"Huh. Do that 'lot."

"Yeah, I guess… didn't use to."

He entered the adjoining bathroom, a corroded, cracked-tiled mess with plastic sheets pinned to the ceiling in a weak attempt to keep out the filth. I heard him fumbling with the taps and, for one of the few times since I'd arrived, I heard the faucet hiss with a vengeance.

I perked up on the bed, "Do we have water?"

"Usually do."

"Yeah, but more than a drip?"

"Uh-huh."

If I wasn't so burdened by my swollen stomach, I would have flown from the bed and surged into that bathroom. He was hunched, rinsing his hands in the stream of cloudy water, before I reached forth and shoved the stopper into place.

"I have no idea how long it's been since I've bathed out of something other than a bucket," I breathed.

"Ain't hot."

"No, but it's not cold, either. You think you could get some soap from Mama?"

He grunted and batted away a plastic sheet, before turning to leave, and I wasted no time in stripping away my dingy, cotton dress, its hemline already hiked well past my knees as my stomach outgrew it. The tub filled slowly and, as the murky water reached the rim, the tap coughed and spat and I had to turn it off for fear of using all we had.

I slid into the tepid bathwater, my body creaking like a settling house, and let my head lay back against the cool lip of the tub, skin turning to goose flesh. The tips of my knees and top of my stomach were the only things breaking the surface, tiny, stranded islands anchored to the sea.

"Mama got…" Lizard's voice petered off for a moment. "Uh, Mama got some. Didn't know what I outta bring…"

He held out three eroded bars of soap, and I chose a washed-out purple one that smelled distantly of lavender, noticing his fingernails to be particularly gritty.

"You need to take a bath."

He grunted, dropping the other two bars in the sink.

"Come on."

"Gonna smell like a girl."

"You'll smell like me," I urged, sitting up and scooting to one side of the ruddy tub.

He eyed me in a way I had before never seen – weary, cagey, like a dog that had just been whipped – but stripped off his filthy clothes all the same, stepping tentatively into the bath, my set back to him.

"What's up with you? I've seen you take a bath before; I mean, not as much as you should, but still…"

When he didn't answer, his legs bracketing either side of me, I scoured my skin and hair with the soap, dunking my head again and again beneath the water and breathing in the smell of artificial clean.

I craned a glance over my shoulder and passed him the bar, "Go on, your nails are awful."

He cradled it in his palm as if it were alien to him, before dazedly pulling it along his skin.

"What's… up with you?"

"Thinkin'."

I leaned back against his almost emaciated chest, my hair slapping wetly against his collarbone, "About what?"

"Dunno."

The soap plopped in the water, before buoying back to the surface, and Lizard let his hands wander along my shoulders, my arms, my sides, feeling with his rough and jerky fingers.

"You don't know what you're thinking about?"

He pressed his nose into my hair, his broken lip grazing my scalp, "What you gonna do… when it comes out lookin' like me?"

"I… haven't really thought about it," I lied. "Why– why are you even thinking about that?"

"Goggle bring up, say you gonna get rid of it."

"I… how the fuck would _he _know?"

"Mean, makes sense."

I held back from sitting up abruptly, furious, "I'm not an _animal. _I'm not going to reject my baby if I don't like how it _looks._"

His hand surfaced and brushed along the top of my stomach as if to calm me, feeling the cramped squirms from within, water lapping slightly when the baby shifted too suddenly.

"I would."

I rolled my eyes, "No, you wouldn't."

"If I was you."

His hand drifted, cupping the base of my belly, and he ran his thumb back and forth across my drum-tight skin.

"Don't say that."

He traced his other hand along my cheekbone, pressing against my lips and, with a bit of a struggle, I sat up and turned to face him. He looked mangier than usual, face matted with dust and skin deeply reddened, and I massaged soapy water into his hair, pressing as closely as I could and tucking my forehead against his throat.

"Did Big Mama ever reject any of her babies?"

"Nah, but she knew she wasn't gon' get no normal babies, no matter who the daddy."

"What about anyone in Hades clan?"

"Sure. Plenty them outsider girls, screamin', not willin' to feed their babies, even look at 'em."

I guided his hand flush to my side. The baby, mid-stretch, flailed its little limbs and straightened its tiny torso, before slowly furling back up.

"Feel that?"

"Uh-huh."

"That's been happening inside of me for _months._ Hell, I can't sleep half the time because she's kicking me in the kidneys."

"So?"

"So, she's…" I couldn't quite put words to it, couldn't explain how I hated the halls that I walked, but would fight to hell to keep on walking them, for the sake of… "_My_ baby."

I settled, straddling his thighs, and he placed either hand firmly on the front of my stomach, puffy stretchmarks texturing my skin and ripples disturbing it.

"Saturn's clan, if it don't look strong 'nough, the baby, they uh…"

"Perform infanticide?"

He stared blankly at me, "Huh?"

"Infanticide, it's… see, back in ancient times, sick or deformed babies would be thrown off a hill or just left to starve…"

He rubbed his hand in a slow circle, "Can't let 'er starve."

"You won't."

He ran a hand through his hair, "Tell me somethin'."

"What?"

"Anything."

I laid down in the tub, curling my legs, and pressed my face to his clavicle, "Um, sometimes, in hospitals, babies get mixed up and parents get the wrong ones."

"Wha… _how?_"

"They take the baby away to clean it, put it in a little bed for a while, and, _bam, _grab you the wrong one when it's time to leave."

"Bet they'd recognize ours."

"Yeah, probably."

"Tore up lip, gon' be goddamned pale…"

"Oh god, you're right."

"And I'm damn sorry 'head of time for when she comin' out short."

I snorted, "The lip will probably be the least of her problems. She's gonna burn up…"

"It fine, we gon' just get her a hat like Goggle's."

"I'll just take his, let his head boil."

"What, and do more damage to his brain? Nah."

I laughed into his chest, and, as I gasped out a breath, an echo of thunder pulsed heavily overhead, drowning out my voice and, in its totality, bringing a sudden procession of slaps against the roof and windows.

"Is that… is it _raining?_"

"Oh, I… guess so."

In a mad, graceless scramble, I was out of the tub, "_Come on!_"

"What, you gon' go out naked?"

"If I have to!"


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

I had almost forgotten what it felt like to stand beneath a sheet of rain.

I stepped down, barefoot, from the rotting porch, and felt the dust and sand of the desert turning soft beneath the storm, streaks of dirty water pinwheeling into the ruts along the town's main "road." I slowly tilted my head back, feeling drops, cool and smooth and forgiving, catching on my face, and stretched my arms out. The cotton dress I'd pulled on clung to my skin, but it didn't mater, it didn't matter at all — the rain was falling and I was somewhere else, my eyes screwed shut as I imagined standing in the streets of Ohio as a little girl, opening my mouth to swallow a storm.

I heard excited giggles coming from behind me and broke out of my reverie — Ruby had awoken Mercury and Venus and was holding their hands, guiding them out into the rain as they stared up in abject wonder, reaching out tiny hands to catch droplets between their fingers. Slowly they edged out from under the porch's roof and began to giggle, jumping in place at first, before Venus roughly tagged Mercury and they began tearing through the mud, water sloshing about their feet as they squealed. I realized as I watched them that they had never see the rain, that the concept of water spilling down from the sky was as faraway and fanciful to them as any fairy story, and, for some reason, my heart felt crushed like a rusted can as their laughter rang through the town. They had had so little their entire lives, even less than the rain, and they would never cease to be deprived. Home for them would always be dust and blood and rattlesnakes, and fairness would only be used to describe the complexion of those who blistered in the sun.

It wasn't until Lizard came up beside me, hands in his pockets, that I realized I was crying.

"Thought you liked the rain," he said softly and I clasped my hand over my mouth to muffle a sudden sob.

"They've never seen it. They've _never_ seen the rain and they're not going to again for a long time," I choked out. "They deserve so much _more_."

There was a stretch of silence before he stepped closer to me and I felt his hand come to rest on the small of my back, "People ain't always gonna get what they deserve. Venus and Mercury'll get what we give 'em."

"We can't give them the rain."

"Reckon we just have to find whatever's second best."

My eyes were burning, "There's so much out there. _So much. _I mean, how do you even _explain _something like the ocean or mountains to people who will never get to see them?"

"You good with words."

"There aren't any words for how deep the ocean is."

"'Really deep.'"

"You can say that because you've never _been_. It's more than really deep. You get in it and look down and never, ever see the bottom. It goes on for miles and miles and there are animals there we haven't even discovered deep down in the dark."

He was looking at me, rain purling down his face, "Why's it dark?"

"It's _that _deep. No light can reach the bottom, and it's freezing cold and the pressure would crush you like paper. People have gone down in subs and all the fish glow and look like aliens, and I don't even know why we're talking about this. I just saw the rain and all I could think was I won't be able to explain the rain to my baby and if I can't explain the rain how will I explain _anything else?_"

"Don't matter. Ain't no place for us out there."

"But there should be—"

"Well, there ain't. People like you made sure o' that."

I fell silent, and tried to concentrate on the rain tapping against my skin, leaning my head back again, trying to tell myself that I wouldn't be able to do this again for a long, long time and now was not the time for sadness.

Behind us, I heard a wheeze and the sound of creaking wood and I turned around slowly. Goggle, holding his side and breathing noisily, had eased his way out of the house and was sitting on the lowest porch step, rain speckling his shoes and pants. The way he looked up seemed lost, like the sky had captured his mind and he couldn't navigate the clouds to get it back.

"It's better if you stand in it," I said softly.

He grunted, but, a moment later, he struggled to his feet and joined us in the rain, his shock of blonde hair becoming soaked and clinging to his head.

"How long has it been since it rained?" I asked.

Lizard shrugged, "Dunno. A while."

"Yeah, but how long is a while?"

"You deaf? I already said—"

"Six years," Goggle rasped. "Six years and three months."

I startled, not having expected him to respond, "How do you know that?"

"Watch everything. Keep track."

"Someone has to," I replied and caught in his strange, slit-like eyes what almost looked like pride, rather than his typical disdain.

"How's the bullet hole?" I asked.

"Closin'."

"In the Outside, people have killed other people with bullets made of meat and bone."

"Meat and bone…" Goggle parroted.

"They shape the meat like bullets and pack them really tightly, so that they'll penetrate a person's body. Once they hit an organ, the meat bullets explode and get mixed into the wound and, when the police come, it looks like the person was shot with nothing at all. They do tests and can't find traces of metal or anything."

"Good idea," Lizard acknowledged, his eyes trailing after Venus and Mercury as they threw mud at each other. "How you do that?"

"Dunno. I just saw on TV. They didn't exactly explain how to make a hard-to-trace murder weapon."

"You wouldn't do it right," Goggle told his brother. "You just ruin the gun."

"I would not."

"You just gonna try to shove meat in a gun and what's that gonna get you but a ruined gun?"

"I'd make the bullets first, ya dumb shit."

"That don't mean it'll work!"

I stared up into the sky as they bickered, Lizard's hand never leaving my back, and I felt like I was tearing, one foot becoming more and more anchored into the sand as the other still fought to run into the heavens.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

**Author's Note: Just as a forewarning, this chapter is pretty graphic.**

* * *

><p>As the rain thundered down, harder and harder, I slid my hand to Lizard's waist and hooked a finger in his belt loop, stepping backwards and tugging for him to follow me. He glanced back, eyes fuzzy with confusion, and I stared at him, face slate-blank, and pulled harder. As Goggle stared into the sky and the children skittered through the puddles, rain pelting their faces, we receded from them as quietly and slickly as shadows, me leading him.<p>

The porch boards whined beneath our feet and Lizard closed the space between my back and him, pushing his hands flush against my ribs and pressing his mouth to the nape of my neck, gently worrying my skin between his canted teeth, testing the flesh behind my ear with his tongue. His hands slid forward and down, holding my stomach, and my breath soughed softly, a whimpering sound billowing up like dust from the back of my throat.

I stepped away, elbowing open our front door, and turned to face him as it bounced shut behind him. We were both soaked to the bone and beyond, his hair sealed against his scalp, once-interrupted rain drops breaking free from his face and crashing to the floor, and I pressed as closely to him as I could. His split mouth sought mine, hands roughly gripping my breasts, and I raked my fingers down his arms, feeling his muscles jerking, always anxious, never still. He wandered from my mouth to my jaw, my throat, my clavicle, and I eased myself down onto the couch, him leaning over me, the space that was once my lap long gone. His fingers became tangled in the bear trap of my messy hair, and I whined in time with the wind outside, his mouth firmly rooted between my breasts.

Heat broke through the chill the rain had left and my body tightened, the shoulder of my dress falling by the wayside, buttons undone, and my bra being unclipped with some struggle. As he sucked, gentler than usual, one hand now hooked in my armpit, a sharp, needle-like sensation shot through my chest and I choked, rearing back, before I realized with a wave of horror and shame what was happening — a slight trickle of cloudy fluid was trickling down my bare chest.

"Oh my god," I choked. "Oh my god, I didn't know that would already— I guess this is when it starts, but I had no—"

In the middle of my clumsy fumbling for words, Lizard eased a hand between my shoulder blades and replaced his mouth and my face lit a bright and terrible red.

"You don't have t—"

The needling eased and was replaced by a sensation of being empty too strange for true words, his forehead damp and pressed against me. My hand hesitantly cradled the back of his head and something foreign and confusing rushed through me — a crippling pity that I thought, perhaps, I could fix. I dipped my head, chin resting against his hair, and tears sprang out of my eyes like weeds as a feeling of loss that was not my own built in my bones. He drew back from me then, refusing eye contact, and undid the rest of my buttons, throwing the dress open and leaving shaky, lopsided kisses down my chest and stomach, hesitating at my navel and resting his face against my taut skin. The baby tumbled, a foot wiping back and forth inside of me, along the front wall of my uterus. I rested my palm against his shoulder and felt something human enough to frighten me — he was shaking, but not in the way of pent up frustration. He reached back to feel my hand, still not looking up, and whispered so quietly I almost missed it, "Gonna do right by you."

I held back a sob as he descended further, slipping my fraying underwear down my legs and helping me to shift my legs onto his shoulders. He paused for a moment, simply staring, before burying his mouth, ruined and ugly and nature's cruelest joke, between my thighs. I leaned back as he roughly shoved his tongue into me, but that weighty sorrow clung like sweat, swimming and mixing in with the hum that was building below my pelvis.

The drapes were slightly ajar and I could see Goggle's faint outline then, swaying slightly, and for the first time I wondered if he had ever had anyone, if he had ever felt fit to tear apart, face buried in some tight and secret place, if he had ever felt required to do right by anyone at all. I found my answer before I had even finished wondering, and, for the first time, I mourned for him and what I could only imagine was an infinite loneliness, a darker shade of the loneliness that sickened the soul of every single person in that miserable, forgotten village, a loneliness that had bound me to forgive what shouldn't be forgiven and drew to me the mouth of a miserable man.

I felt myself tighten and come undone in waves, over and over again, and I moaned loudly as he kept going, as if he thought I would disappear should he lean away from me.

When he finally did pull away and messily wiped his mouth on his sleeve, I realized I was truly crying, warm, heavy drops tumbling down my cheeks, and he held my face awkwardly. I leaned forward as best I could and our mouths pressed together, my hands blindly reaching forward until I found and unzipped his fly.

"Ain't—"

"Don't say anything," I pleaded under my breath.

I stood so he could lie, and climbed onto him.

"We don't need to say anything," I said, the foot that had been running for the heavens falling back and joining its brother in the sand.


End file.
